So far we have skimmed some of the studio set ups and processes that yielded a
portion of the electronic work of Oliveros during the 1960s. In the context of
echo, she had used everything from her tape loop process using two or more
machines, and various spring reverb units when available. We mentioned naturally
occurring resonant tools such as the bath tub used in Time Perspectives,
but skipped over the early tape work utilizing the auditory properties of apple
boxes, in which the “interest in resonance is also reflected.” By the early
1970s Oliveros’s work was moving away from the confines of the cave like studio
set up, and she seemed more engaged with resonance in the world around her, the
world as in both the grand physical space, and the one on one interpersonal
resonance with humans.

Though she worked with groups in spaces all throughout the 1960s, perhaps mostly
due to the nature of documentation, or in SFTMC’s case, lack thereof, we can
come away from the 1960s work of Pauline Oliveros’s and think of it as a
solitary practice, in the studio, despite many collaborative works, a good deal
incorporating dance and or theatre. She herself states, “Tape delay was
cumbersome.” Since she preferred to perform electronic music live rather than
present fixed media pieces as quite a few of her contemporaries did, and as for
the studio she stated “For some reason, however, I’m not interested in going
into a studio anymore. I’m not sure why. I guess I prefer the contact of nice
warm bodies to the cold isolation of a studio.”

Perhaps a movement from the elemental character of echo to the more
encompassing, grand worldly and elemental properties of pure resonance can be
seen in this transference from hermetic to communal? Of note her Sonic
Meditations began around this time too and are very much tied to community.

Constant curiosity had her investigate John J. O’Neill’s biography of Serbian
Electronic Engineer Nikola Tesla, Prodigal Genius, and it is not
surprising that this character would excite the electronic music community so
with its dramatic story of the outsider scientist seen as a mad magician, and,
particularly, his noted experiment in resonant frequencies causing earthquakes.

Oliveros often refers to experiencing sound not just with her ears, but also as
a physical experience, i.e., hearing with her entire body. In this sense
investigating what resonate frequencies will effect physical spaces, something
she began doing with David Tudor as a performance based work, was a natural
extension from her excitement of Tesla’s experiments. Tudor and her even went as
far as to incorporate this episode into a score to accompany a Merce Cunningham
dance piece entitled Nikola Tesla, Cosmic Engineer. Though, based upon the audio
and video documentation, as far as I could tell resonating frequencies were not
a central part to this piece, but these resonating aspects often do not
translate through recordings. Oliveros has discussed the experiments she and
Tudor performed at this period with glee as she described rotating the
stationary flags lined up in a theatre with the simple act of broadcasting these
low end sounds.

As she moved from the studio to more improvisatory live acoustic work,
practicing and performing with her accordion, solo and in groups,
Oliveros began working at the University of California, San Diego, which
despite her new leanings towards acoustic ensembles, had a decent
electronic studio. It was during this time that call and response seems
to not only be part of the listening and meditative process of her
improvisatory work, but also in her compositional work. Looking at a
1976 score of Willowbrook we see it calls for two groups of
players, a “Generating Group” and a “Reflective Group.” Through the
instructions on the score delineating tasks between the two groups we
get a sense once again of a reverberating space, created by the
composer, much like the internal circuit and wire based one of the
electronic studio, but now opened up out of the voltaic domain and now
in the world of “warm bodies” and acoustical space.

The notion of acoustical space becomes a dominating concern for Oliveros
and her work. “Varieties of music and acoustical spaces combine in
symbiotic relationships that range from very limited to very powerful
for the interweaving expressions of musical art, architectures, and
audiences.” This is nothing terribly new in the context of performance
spaces, cathedrals in the western world, and communal spaces where
weeklong festivals incorporating music, dance, and other aspects of a
given culture have existed as long as human kind has had communities and
the structures in which to perform them. In modern classical music we
even have composers designing spaces for their music to be performed and
heard in such as composer Richard Wagner working with architect
Gottfried Semper on Bayreuth’s Festival Theater (1876), the Artists’
Colony in Darmstadt (1901) and the Bauhaus’ Artists’ Theater in Dessau
(1921), that is, performance venues conceived by artists themselves and
specifically tailored to suit their needs and artistic vision.

Alternately we see Oliveros quite content in investigating and incorporating the
existing world of performance spaces. The world to her seems not something to be
bent and crafted to her creative needs and liking. There is a grand sense of
inclusiveness in her work, and a space that conventionally is thought of, as
having undesired acoustic properties to most performers and composers is not
necessarily a “bad” acoustic space to her. “Oliveros is not about telling other
folks how the music they play (or don’t) should (or shouldn’t) sound.”

Perhaps the one of the most spectacular spaces in terms of reverberance and
delayed, naturally occurring echo that she has performed in was the two-hundred
feet in diameter and fourteen feet deep cistern built as a water supply system
for the Fort Worden military base. Emptied of its 2 million gallons, it yields a
45 second delay, and is now named the “Dan Harpole Cistern” in honour of
Harpole’s life and work in the arts. The interplay with her small group of
players, known as the Deep Listening Band, trombonist and didgeridoo player
Stuart Dempster and vocalist Panaiotis produced sustained tones that are
modulated by the acoustics, making it often seem as if there were more
instruments then there are, or as if this music has been electronically
processed, which we know is not the case. The unfortunate end effect of
listening to such awe-inspiring recording, known simply as Deep Listening,
is that, unlike the electronically produced tape pieces, you realize that you
are missing something by not experiencing it live.

Yet another subterranean space that The Deep Listening Band performed in and
have released recordings of are on the 1990 CD Troglodyte’s Delight.
Performed in the Tarpaper Caves of Rosendale New York, a mere half hour from the
Deep Listening Institute headquarters in Kingston New York, these caves are
also, like the cistern, abandoned by their original inception. A prime source of
natural cement, they were dug out prior to the 1900s, its materials used in
construction of national landmarks such as the Brooklyn Bridge and Statue of
Liberty two hours south in New York City, as well as for the nations Capitol
building in Washington, DC. Limestone being the primary mineral, the walls of
these caves are hard and dense, and its tunnels varied and winding yielding an
abundance of varieties of echo and reverberation that no electronic effect,
digital or other, could compete with. At its base there is a perpetually frozen
stream, even in the high tempters of the Upstate New York summers, creating yet
another reverberant surface on which the Deep Listening Band, this time expanded
as a five piece augmented by guests percussionist Fritz Hauser and vocalist
Julie Lyon Balliette, would sound out the space.

Where to go from there? Why not up? Earlier this year Oliveros used the unique
performance space of Ann Hamilton’s nearly nine story high Tower at Oliver Ranch
in Sonoma County, California. Chiefly constructed from a similar concrete that
was excavated to create the caves in New York. Examining the score of Tower
Ring one gets a sense that the experience in the bright sun of Northern
California will be a more uplifting, for lack of a better term, positively
spiritual? This is an interesting contrast to Troglodyte’s Delight, which
has in its sound and title almost a black humour quality that is often associated
with New York and the North East. “I think there is, of course, a very large
difference in the two landscapes. The West coast has more space, so to speak;
longer distances between cities. The East coast is more compacted and of course
more influenced by traditional values than the West coast.” With its highly
expanded orchestra cascading bells and voices, gongs and long wire instruments
bounce and reverberate through the tall narrow space up and through the open
top. And though there is larger arsenal one gets a sense that it’s not as dense
as the underground performances.

An obvious thread leads through all of these experiments, compositions,
performances and philosophies. By really listening to the world around us, an
echo will reverberate a sound quality uniquely reflected by the receiver/sender
who dwells in that space.